tatango

I’d like to be the first to welcome the latest additions to our growing Tatango team. Today we brought on VP of Engineering, Amiel Martin and Community Manager, Alex Mittelstaedt full time.

I’ve added the bio from our team page for each employee below, check it out.

Amiel Martin is our VP of Engineering, responsible for actually making our products work. Amiel has a long and storied history of developing with Ruby on Rails, and is often the go-to-guy for thorny Ruby or Rails problems. In his free time, Amiel can often be found as a core member of the Juggling Jollies, an acrobatically inclined comic juggling troupe based out of the Pacific Northwest.

Get to know Amiel a little better on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

Alex is the newest member of the team and the one working hard to build a dynamic experience for Tatango users! His true passion comes in working with people, bringing them together, and encouraging them to foster connections by exchanging ideas. Outside of the office, you may find Alex with a large group of beautiful women, all of whom have a glowing personality.

You can connect with Alex on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. 

Check out Derek’s welcome video to the new hires here.

YES, according to a recent post on 160characters.org that made this claim with Nielsen Mobile’s figures to back.

Here’s a quick blurb from the article…

As of Q2 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends or receives 357 text messages per month, compared to placing or receiving 204 phone calls. Though the number of calls has remained relatively steady, the number of text messages is up 450% from just two years prior. Q2 2008 was the second consecutive quarter in which the average number of text messages sent was significantly higher than the average number of phone calls placed…

What do you think, are phone calls a thing of the past? You can check out the rest of the article here.

Happy holidays from everyone at Tatango. Look out for some great things in 2009 that will make group communications even better!

We’re on the second week of our pizza party giveaway and the lucky group that took it home this week is the University of Arizona Sigma Pi fraternity! 

The guys tried to convince me to buy them a keg instead, but we opted for the pizza. =P

Want to win a pizza party for your group? It’s simple, just send a message using Tatango Voice and you’re automatically entered in to win. 

Is your group the next winner?

I ran across an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that I had to share. All the time I hear people talking about using social media to market their products and services, yet they don’t even know what that entails. 

This is a great article that lays out the basic services and techniques that should be used to effectively incorporate social media into your marketing efforts. It’s a great read and a huge help, you can check out the article here.

I’d like to announce that we’ve rolled out a new beta feature that I think is really cool - a tool to pipe an RSS feed to your Tatango group! This has been a feature we’ve been thinking about for some time, and should be a great tool to help bloggers generate some more traffic when they post new blog posts.

It’s really quite easy to set up. Go to your group, click “Advanced”, then click on “Syndications”.

Click “New Syndication”, and you’ll be given a field in which to put the URL of your RSS feed.

Click “Save”, and the next time your RSS feed updates, a message will be sent to your entire group with as much of your post as it can fit in a single SMS, followed by a link to the rest of the post!

* This feature is brand new and definitely in beta, so if you run into any problems, or have any suggestions, drop Tatango Support an email at support@tatango.com.

Come ask questions, get advice or just chat.

Tune in here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/derek-johnson

Last week, we mentioned that Tatango was going to give away a free pizza party every week for the next 3 months to celebrate the official launch of Tatango Voice. 

We now have our first winner, congratulations to Leavenworth Young Life! They will be receiving a pizza party (with all the fixins’) for their entire group!

Your group could be the next winner, simply send a message using Tatango Voice and you’re automatically entered in to win. There’s no limit to the number of times you can be entered, so start sending!

We’ve received a lot of emails, tweets and Facebook messages lately requesting ad-free messaging, so we listened.

Introducing the new and improved Tatango Pro. 

I’ve embedded an image of the different Tatango Pro packages below (click the picture to view). 

What do you think about the new subscription model? We’d love to hear your feedback!